


proprietary rights

by kyluxtrashcompactor



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ghosts, Haunted Houses, M/M, clairvoyant kylo Ren, pragmatic armitage hux
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:39:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27089506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyluxtrashcompactor/pseuds/kyluxtrashcompactor
Summary: Armitage Hux has always dreamed of owning his own home. The charming Victorian he's purchased hadn't just been a bargain, it'd been an absolute steal. He's thrilled at the various renovation projects that present themselves from the moment he moves in, even if he's not quite sure about the strange new neighbor who wears eyeliner and calls himself a witch.It takes less than a day, however, for Hux to encounter something sinister about the place. He tells himself he's just jumping at shadows, that it'll take time to get used to living alone.Except that maybe he's not really alone at all.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 72
Kudos: 281





	1. Chapter 1

Hux can feel the eyes watching him, following his every move like they have been since he’d stepped out of his car. It feels like some sort of bad omen, like his new neighbor—dressed in all black with black hair and a piercing, curious, black gaze—was a crow presaging death before dawn. 

Hux flicks another furtive look at the man perched on the front steps of the adjacent house. The moment their gazes lock, Hux looks away again, heated by the intensity of the man’s dark stare. 

Thankfully, one of the hired movers walks by him with a box labeled  _ this side up _ , with that side down, serves as a distraction. 

“Give me that,” Hux snaps at the man, who freezes in his tracks. Hux takes a deep breath and holds his hands out for the box. 

The guy—some college kid in his early twenties, vigorously chewing gum— shrugs, hands the box over, and turns back to the moving truck without a word. 

_ Sixty dollars an hour, _ Hux thinks to himself bitterly, setting the box on the grass and gently turning it over. He picks it up again, and carries it into the house himself while he’s paying someone else to do it.

It’s early evening by the time the movers finally leave. Standing in his kitchen, surrounded by boxes, Hux is glad for the reprieve and the silence of an empty house, even if he’s always found something slightly eerie about gutted rooms. 

The overhead light is a waxy yellow, making the kitchen a pocket golden glow in the gathering shadows. Hux glances up, frowning at the glass globe over the fixture, and decides it needs to be taken down and washed first thing in the morning. 

He reaches up and opens one of the faded oak cabinets over the sink, peeking in and grimacing. They need to be scoured and need to have fresh shelf liner cut for them before he can put a single thing away. 

At least it’s an excuse not to do anything else for the rest of the evening. 

He takes a last look out of the kitchen’s single window. The century-old glass is thick and translucent, making the overgrown lawn into a muted watercolor. He’ll have to replace these, too, when his savings account recovers from his hefty down payment on the place. 

The house next door is painted a deep, indigo blue that looks almost black in the gloam, but the trim around the window that faces Hux is a cheerful white, outlining a bluish light indoors. There’s a pulse to it, slow and steady, like lungs breathing. The kind of fade-in-fade-out rope lighting they put on Christmas trees, Hux imagines. 

A blur of motion distorts the window just as he starts to turn away, indistinct colors shifting across the pane. Hux leans forward, eyebrows pinching together as he peers into the yard, but then his exhausted, analytical brain catches up. 

He turns around, the hair on the back of his neck rising. His own reflection had been superimposed on the glass—that blur of motion had moved from left to right, vanished briefly when it passed Hux, then reappeared on the other side. Whatever it had been had come from behind him, not outside. 

There’s nothing there. The house is quiet, the chain lock secure on the front door. Hux’s throat is dry, though, and he’s suddenly afraid that one of the movers had hidden in a closet perhaps, waiting until Hux was alone to assault him. 

He scans the boxes at his feet, then stoops and peels the tape off the one labeled  _ silverware _ . His kitchen knives are at the top, safely stored in their bamboo knife block, and he slides out the biggest of them. 

His heart rate has picked up and the palm curled around the blade handle is clammy as he picks his way through the litter of cardboard boxes and out of place furniture, through the open arch to the east-facing side of the house. Feeling around on the wall to his left for the lightswitch, he flicks it on and floods the hallway with an uneven light. Risking only a cursory glance at the fixture mid-way down the hall, Hux feels a prickly irritation at the fact that one of the two bulbs must be out. Yet another thing to do before he can start to settle in. 

The door immediately to his left he knows to be a linen closet with built-in paneled shelving, but Hux opens it anyway, jumping as unoiled hinges shriek. The shelves are, of course, bare, as is the cubby at the base of the closet. He pushes it closed with a thud. 

The door of his future library is facing him. He crosses the hall and turns the knob, pushing it open slowly, keeping the knife poised in front of himself. Light from the hallway and from the bare windows illuminates the empty room, and Hux puts the wall to his back as he hits the switch for the overhead. At least this one shines with a healthy, sterile glow, pushing aside the shadows and calming his jangled nerves somewhat. 

He pushes the door all the way open until it’s flush to the wall, leaving no room for anyone to be hiding behind it. There’s a closet to his right, and Hux moves cautiously over to it, grabs the door handle and yanks it open, knife poised. 

Again, there’s nothing. 

He secures that door and then abandons the room, starting down the hall. He peeks into the bathroom, but there’s nowhere for someone to hide—only a child would have fit under the cabinet below the sink, and the deep, clawfoot bathtub has no curtain around it yet.

He leaves the door open, just in case, then moves toward the guest bedroom. Before he reaches the door, a detail from what he’d seen in the kitchen slots forcefully into place, making him stop in his tracks. 

He’d been facing east. The archway leading to this part of the house had been on his right. To his left, the direction from which the flash of movement had come, was nothing but counterspace, cabinetry, and the old fashioned stove that had partly sold Hux on this house. 

Whatever had passed by him would have to have been in the kitchen the entire time, standing just to his left. 

Hux’s arms go tight with gooseflesh, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. He whirls around, fully expecting to find someone behind him, but there’s no one. 

_ Of course there’s not _ , Hux thinks to himself, suddenly feeling stupid. He’s alone in a new, unfamiliar home, in an unfamiliar neighborhood. He’s never lived alone before, and it’s not surprising that it’s got him jumping at shadows—he probably will be for days until he’s really settled in. 

Just to be sure, Hux finishes his sweep of the house, checking latches and locks, and finally retires to the master bedroom. The only thing he’s gotten set up so far is his bed; even the nightstand is just a cardboard box with his alarm clock and the charging port for his phone. Still, this is  _ his _ house, his escape from years of living with his ailing, ungrateful father, and so to Hux, the room looks like a five star hotel. 

He rifles through a box outside the door to the master bath and produces towels and a collection of bath products, looking forward to relaxing in his bathtub. It’s a deep, clawfoot tub that the realtor had said was installed in the ‘20s—the porcelain is scuffed in places, slightly dingy in others, and the fixtures squeal when he turns them. 

Hux strips off his dusty clothes while waiting for the tub to fill, only realizing when he’s mostly naked that he’s left the bathroom door standing wide open. He’s never been able to do that, never had this kind of privacy, but after his experience in the kitchen earlier, it’s not quite as heady as it could have been. He pushes the door closed and twists the brass lock, but not before snatching the knife he’d left on the floor beside the box of bathroom essentials.

It takes some fiddling to get the water coaxed to a tolerable temperature, as it seems that the hot water has two settings only—cool, and scalding. While he waits for it fill, he spreads a bathmat out, eyeing the floor tile critically as he does. It’s one of the few things about the house he doesn’t like, except for the fact that it's genuine, period ceramic. The pistachio green, mosaic flowers blooming on the cream-colored background will go with absolutely no decor motif that Hux can imagine, and they will have clearly to go. At least they’re valuable, being original, and with the right artisans hired, they can be carefully removed and sold to help with the cost of the remodel. 

He turns the water off, wincing at the metal shriek and thinking that perhaps the archaic fixtures will have to go as well, but he’s mollified by the ecstasy of the hot water as he carefully maneuvers over the high lip of the tub. Steam wafts from the surface, stirring as Hux settles in and submerges to his chin. He hasn’t had such a luxury since the last time he stayed in a hotel—the tub in his father’s house was too shallow, always leaving Hux to choose between leaving his long legs exposed or his chest. Entirely unsatisfying. 

Hux sighs, closing his eyes and allowing himself a small smile, imagining coming home from work and relaxing in the bath with candles and a glass of wine instead of being harried by Brendol to turn up the TV, or bring him his evening tea, or telling him that his blasted tea was too weak. 

Lifting a hand from the water, Hux curls all his fingers in but one, flipping off the memory of his father. The funeral had been three months ago, and Hux had not spent one day of that time grieving for the bastard. The sudden vacuum that had been left behind with the cessation of responsibility and the full-time maintenance of his threadbare sanity had left Hux in a state of restless ennui, which he had then dispersed by resolving to get the hell out of that tomb and try to make up for a decade of lost living. 

Soaking until his feet start to prune in his own bathtub is just one of many stones on that path. He turns the tap on several times to reheat the water, until, finally feeling loose-limbed and drowsy, he washes his hair and scrubs the day’s work from his tired body. 

At last, he pulls the chain to unseal the drain plug and steps out, grabbing his towel and patting himself dry before cocooning himself the fluffy, powder-blue terrycloth. The tile is chilly under his bare feet, and the air feels like it’s dropped several degrees since Hux had started his bath. To be expected, Hux supposes, in an old house in need of updates to the insulation. Yet another thing to add to his list, but he’s less vexed by it than he is grateful for an extended project that isn’t waiting for Brendol to die. 

The free-standing porcelain sink is likewise original, and while lovely, does possess the drawback of having nowhere to set his toothpaste and toothbrush on its smooth rounded sides. He knows there’s a period style of vanity,  _ Verondia _ , or some such, that will work much better, and will prevent him having to display his toiletries on exposed shelving or, worse, having to replace the fantastic, beveled Victorian mirror with a garish medicine cabinet. 

Thinking of this while he uncaps his toothpaste, Hux glances up to admire the mirror.

And takes a horrified step back from it. 

Condensation is thick on the glass, but not so much so that he can’t see the amorphous shape behind him, man-shaped, half-hidden behind the murky reflection of his shoulder. 

Hux whirls around, coming face to face with empty, frigid air. His tremulous breath is a thin vapor in the far too unnatural cold. Gripping the sink to keep his knees from giving out with fright, Hux glances back to the mirror. The condensation has turned to streams of water like rainfall on a window, catching on the distressed, beveled frame and pooling in the troughs. 

Darting a shaking hand out, Hux swipes the water away, clearing a smudged view of the wall behind the tub and the indistinct impressions of green and white tile that line its lower half. 

There’s nothing behind him, no one, though Hux checks again to be sure. The knife he’d spirited into the bathroom with him is still where he’d left it on the toilet tank—fat lot of good it’d have done him should he be assaulted while in the bath. It feels pointless to walk over to it now and snatch it, because he knows for a fact that the door has been closed and locked this whole while, and that there’s no where in the smallish space for anyone to hide. 

He stands there for long moments with the knife handle wrapped in his white-knuckled, bloodless fingers, keeping his back to the wall. The last of the bathwater is sucked down the drain with a stuttering, choking sound that gives Hux chills, and he watches for long moments as the mirror slowly clears. 

He finally realizes that the air has warmed a bit, the gooseflesh pebbling his arms gradually receding and blood-flow starting to move again in his limbs. His head starts to clear as the flight-panic drains out of him, and taking the place of it is a feeling of immense stupidity. 

“ _ Red hell and death, Armitage _ ,” he hisses, peeling himself off the wall and taking several forced steps toward the door. He hesitates before passing by the mirror, but a quick glance into it shows him nothing but his own, pale face. 

He starts again toward the door and his foot comes down on something that gives like rotting vegetation, squelching under his toes. Hux yelps, yanking his foot back, then curses again when it comes away caked in blue toothpaste. 

It takes long minutes to wrest the sticky goo off his foot, and longer still to scour it off the tile with hot water and the one towel he’d brought into the bathroom. He could have opened the door and gotten another one, rather than crouch there naked, but he was loathe to find anything but an empty room on the other side. 

At last, however, he had no excuse, so unlocks it and cracks it open slowly. He still has the knife in his hand and tries to keep an equally wary eye over his shoulder, but finally emerges unscathed back into his bedroom. 

Hux pulls the door firmly closed behind him, sighing. The tingling fear has mostly faded now into exhaustion and a certain flavor of disgust with himself for jumping at shadows and imagining reflections. Perhaps there’s some kind of latent thing in his unconscious mind born of deeply suppressed grief, or—more likely—guilt about the lack of it over his father’s death. 

Whatever it is, Hux wants nothing else to do with it tonight. He sets the knife on his makeshift night table and stoops to unzip one of several suitcases, searching through the neatly folded clothing to produce his favorite, blue and white striped sleeping trousers and a worn, soft blue t-shirt. As an afterthought, he tucks his feet into a pair of warm socks, then turns his quilt down.

He’s half-way beneath the sheets when a loud, discordant chime echoes through the house. Already tense, Hux’s whole body jerks with surprise, head filling with horrified static until, moments later, the sound comes again and Hux realizes with sudden, embarrassed clarity that it’s the damned  _ doorbell _ . 

“Who in the fuck is this?” Hux grouses to himself, though in all honesty he’s grateful at the prospect of a human being on his front porch. He feels as though he needs some sort of anchor to reality tonight. 

He shuffles down the fall, belatedly deciding that opening the door with an eight inch blade is perhaps not the optimal impression. He deposits his weapon atop another box and flicks on the porch light. There’s little point in trying to peer through the stained glass panel of the front door, so he simply slides the chain off and cracks it open, peeking around the edge of it. 

Dried leaves skitter across the white-washed wooden porch and wind rustles through the branches of the old maple that borders it, making them spindly fingers that claw at the roof. Hux clenches his teeth, body stiff with tension, and the reels back in shock when something suddenly fills the entirety of his vision, blocking out the tree and the sidewalk and the porch itself.

His back hits the wall and he yelps, frozen there as fingers curl around the corner of door and it creaks open. 

“Hi,” a voice says, followed by a face Hux recognizes immediately. It’s his new neighbor with the haunting eyes. 

Wilting, Hux forces himself upright and grasps the door handle, tugging it out of the other man’s grip. 

“It’s not Halloween, is it?” Hux snaps, waving a hand at the guy to incorporate the entirety of his ensemble—khol around his dark eyes, the smattering of piercings in his curiously handsome face, the overlong, black hair, black fingernails, and leather pants. Hux’s eyes linger there for a moment before fixing on his neighbor’s again. “If so I have no treats for you.”

Rather than be offended by this admittedly snide introduction, the man’s rather alluring lips curve up into a smile. He mimics Hux’s undisguised personal assessment, eyes drifting down Hux’s torso.

“Oh I doubt that,” his neighbor purrs, then meets his eyes again. “I’m much more of a  _ trick _ kind of guy though.” His gaze flicks down again, forcing Hux into acute awareness that his peaked nipples are clearly outlined beneath his thin t-shirt. 

Blushing, Hux crosses his arms, pushing the door the rest of the way open and stepping out onto the porch, effectively crowding his unwelcome neighbor back toward the porch steps. 

“Is there something I can do for you?” Hux asks waspishly. 

Something impish passes across the man’s face, and Hux can well imagine what it might be, but fortunately it goes unspoken. 

“I’m Kylo,” he says, jerking a thumb at the house next door. “Your friendly neighborhood witch.” 

Hux gapes at him. “You’re serious?” 

Kylo just smiles indulgently, like he gets this sort of reaction a lot. “Just stopped by to introduce myself, and let you know that if you need anything…” He trails off, glancing past Hux into the house, and when their gazes meet again, the wry humor is gone from Kylo’s features and replaced with something earnest. “...just let me know.” 

Hux raises an eyebrow. “What I need,” he says, “is a good night’s sleep.”

Kylo holds both hands up in a placating gesture. Hux catches the whorls of black tattoos on his inner wrists. “Just saying. You know where to find me.” 

“Thanks,” Hux says in a sour tone.

Kylo smiles, backing away and turning toward the steps. “Even if you uh...,” he goes on, looking back over his shoulder to catch Hux’s eyes as they’d drifted to Kylo's rather remarkable ass. “...don’t need anything, if you’re ever bored…” He shrugs a shoulder and hops the rest of the way down to the sidewalk and starts toward his house. 

“I won’t be  _ bored _ ,” Hux calls after him. “I have months of renovations ahead of me.” 

At that, Kylo stops in his tracks and turns around, pretty face darkened with something. He opens his mouth to speak, but is cut off when the door behind Hux slams shut with a resounding  _ crack _ that rattles the porch beneath Hux’s feet. 

Hux whirls, looking at the door, then turns back to Kylo, annoyed. “Just the wind,” he says, swallowing.

Kylo glances up at the branches of the maple tree overhead, which are still and silent at the moment, then looks at Hux again and shrugs.

“Like I said, you know where to find me.” With one last glance at the house, his strange new neighbor tracks through the grass back to his own yard.

Hux stares after him for a moment, waiting for his nerves to calm, then turns around and glares at his front door. He reaches out and twists the knob, shoves it open, and finds the foyer empty and draped with nighttime shadows. 

Nothing more.

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the encouragement on this little story! It's so fun to write! I am looking forward to answering each and every comment, which I value so much! I'm always, always slow about this, so please don't think that I don't appreciate you!!!

The morning sun is wan, a muted, uninspiring gray that fits Hux’s mood rather perfectly. The inspiration that had filled him to the brim the day before struggles to rise to the surface as he shuffles down the hall to the kitchen for his morning coffee, yawning. His eyes are blurry with drowsiness, and he pauses in the kitchen doorway to rub the stickiness out of them before taking in the scene before him. 

“For fuck’s sake,” he says, sounding peevish in his own ears. 

Every dish, appliance and piece of silverware he owns is packed away, and likewise his coffee. After a mostly sleepless night spent listening for sounds that shouldn’t be there and watching the shadows for anything that moved, the last thing he wants to do is set his kitchen in order sans caffeine. He should. He should get to work, turn this place into a home instead of a storage unit, start creating some familiarity to it that will combat the disquietude. 

He has his teeth clenched just thinking about it. Poking a foot out, he shoves at a box petulantly, scooting it a few inches across the floor, which helps nothing. He sighs, turning around to go back to his bedroom and get dressed. Either he’ll have found the motivation to start unpacking by the time he has clothes on, or he’ll find his car keys instead and go out for coffee. And breakfast. 

The absolute nightmare of a doorbell blasts through the house before he’s even taken a step, startling him so badly that he jumps. The gong-like chime echoes in his head, sound waves needling through his skull and lodging behind his eyes. 

“What century is this?” Hux growls under his breath as he walks toward the door. “Who just goes to someone else’s house and  _ rings the doorbell? _ ” 

He’s all but forgotten his neighbor, who did just such a thing the night before, but it rushes back to him when he pulls the door open with every intention of biting heads off. 

Kylo is standing on the porch, a brown paper sack in one hand and in the other, a cardboard carrier with two sealed cups in it . 

“Morning,” he says, giving Hux a sheepish half-smile, rocking back a little on his heels a little in a way that makes Hux think he expects to be told off. 

Hux just stares at him for a moment, at his slightly smudged eye-liner, his artfully messy hair pulled into a half bun, the black, star shaped earring in one ear. Finally, he realizes he’s just left Kylo standing there and hasn’t said anything. 

“I didn’t think nosferatu came out during the day,” he comments dryly. 

Most people are utterly turned off by Hux’s snarky sense of humor, to the point where some think he’s genuinely unpleasant. Kylo, however, grins. 

“As long as we only visit the lairs of local devils,” he says. Then he holds up the cardboard tray in his hand. “Brought you some coffee. And assorted breakfast items.” 

A mild chill runs up Hux’s spine at Kylo’s preternatural timing, and Kylo must see something on of it on his face, because his own expression closes off briefly. 

“I can...just leave this,” he says, sounding apologetic. He even backs away a step, but Hux shakes his head. 

“No, I’m sorry. I was just…” He almost says that he was thinking this very thing seconds before Kylo had wrung the doorbell, but it feels too cliché. “Come in,” he goes on, moving out of the way and holding the door open for him. 

The bright smile Hux gets in return and the way Kylo holds his gaze for a few seconds with those enigmatic eyes leaves Hux feeling a little warm, and he abruptly looks elsewhere since his damnable ginger complexion shows even the hint of such feelings. 

Once Kylo’s back is to him, however, Hux steals a look as he closes the door. Kylo is stealing his own look, but at the house, head on a swivel and steps cautious like a cat in an unfamiliar environ. 

“Have you um…” Hux begins, but Kylo cuts him off. 

“Been here before? Not inside. But…” He trails off and long seconds tick by without anything further. 

Hux flounders a bit when trying to decide which thing to pursue—Kylo finishing Hux’s sentence for him, or whatever came after the word  _ but.  _

Considering Hux’s experience the night before, the former won out. 

“But what?” he asks, leery. 

Kylo looks over his shoulder and Hux catches a glimpse of pinched eyebrows and troubled eyes, but the expression is shuttered quickly, replaced by the coy look that’s starting to seem like a trademark. 

“Nothing,” he says, managing not to make it seem ominous. 

The person Hux had been approximately forty-eight hours ago would not have let it go, but if there was anything besides  _ nothing _ to Kylo’s queer reaction to this house, Hux didn’t want to know about it. It’d just serve to stuff the shadows in the house full of more sinister possibilities. 

Shrugging, Hux allows himself to be easily distracted by the fact that there’s nowhere fitting to sit in the post-moving day chaos. His dining room table is stacked with boxes, and so is the coffee table, but the couch is at least available. 

Hux scoots several boxes aside to form a path. Kylo follows him, unabashedly taking in the sparse details of Hux’s possessions with curious eyes. Hux imagines him to be the sort of person who enjoys watching people at airports or bus stops, seeing what he can glean from their clothing, the expressions on their faces, the things they carry. What do Hux’s neat, exact labels and mishmash of dated furniture say about him, he wonders?

“Brown doesn’t seem like your color,” Kylo says, settling himself on the middle cushion of the couch and putting the drink tray on the floor beside his feet. 

It takes Hux a moment to discern what that has to do with anything, but then it dawns on him as he, too, sits down—on his father’s old, drab brown couch. 

“Why do you say that?” he asks, even though it’s true.

Kylo fishes a cup of coffee out of the tray and holds it out to Hux. “Black, right?” 

Hux squints. “I wouldn’t say black is my color either.” 

Kylo’s laugh is slightly cute—a huff of air and a single, musical tone.  _ Hah _ . 

“The coffee,” he says, wiggling the cup slightly, then stretching his arm out to push it closer to Hux. 

Comprehension dawns and Hux’s cheeks warm. As he takes the coffee, he can tell that Kylo notices his deepening color. It’s the second time Hux has blushed in front of him in under ten minutes, and Hux resists the urge to insist that he is not, ever, this easily flustered. 

“You know,” Hux says instead, popping the lid off the cup and inhaling the delicious aroma, “I was just thinking of going out to buy some coffee.” His eyes fall on the brown paper sack now on the couch between them. “And breakfast.” It strikes him at exactly that moment what a very uncanny coincidence this was, to which he has now admitted. 

Kylo raises both eyebrows. “I told you, I’m a witch,” he says, with a little amused curve of his lips. 

There’s something about the way he says it, the way his eyes don’t reflect his smile, that makes Hux think he’s not joking at all. Not sure how to respond, Hux hides his discomfiture with a cautious sip of his steaming coffee. 

Kylo balances his coffee between his knees and opens the paper sack. “It doesn’t take a psychic to know you probably didn’t have time to sort out your kitchen,” he says, taking out a yellowish muffin speckled with black seeds. 

He offers it to Hux, who takes it gladly. “Lemon poppy seed is my favorite,” he says, mystified now. He gives Kylo a slant-eyed look. “Maybe you really are a witch. 

Kylo just shrugs, smirking, and pulls a muffin out for himself, sugar-glazed with fat blueberries. “How’d you sleep last night?” he asks.

Hux, mouth full of muffin, swallows and wipes his lips before answering. “That’s an incredibly personal question.” 

Rather than apologize, Kylo glances toward the ceiling, gaze sweeping across it, then down the hall toward Hux’s room. Before Hux can ask him what he’s looking for, Kylo’s gaze swings back to him. 

“Just...I know other people that have lived here...haven’t stayed long.” 

Hux’s mouth goes dry and he has trouble swallowing his muffin. “How many other people?” he asks, attempting to sound merely curious. He’s starting to suspect Kylo is using this impromptu offering of breakfast as an excuse for tourism. 

Kylo nibbles on his bottom lip, looking into the distance thoughtfully. “Hmm...since I’ve lived here, there’ve been three others. A single woman, an older couple, and a family of four. All of them here for less than three months or so.” 

Hux slowly lowers the muffin, then sets it aside entirely on top of a nearby box. He takes an anxious sip of his coffee, then curses, having burnt his tongue. Kylo winces sympathetically. 

“And...how long have you lived next door?” Hux finally manages to ask, sucking on his tongue, which is starting to blister. 

“About two years,” Kylo says. 

“Three families in two years?” Hux murmurs, more to himself than to Kylo. He takes a steadying breath. “Did you...know any of them?” 

Kylo shakes his head. “Nah. You’re the only one I’ve talked to.” Something dances in his eyes, like there’s some secret to the admission. 

There’s a lingering moment where Hux stares at him, unsure whether Kylo is flirting with him, or if he’s imagining it. Kylo stares back, just the barest hint of a smile on his lips, as if waiting to see if Hux will take the bait.

Hux, however, has spent too much of his life hiding certain truths from his homophobic bigot of a father. Even in the privacy of his own home, being free with his interests feels vaguely dangerous. 

“And they just...up and left?” he asks instead. 

The playful interest in Kylo’s eyes wans, and he cracks the lid off his own cup of coffee. “Yep. The last family didn’t even pack. Just vanished, and sent a moving company a week later.” 

Hux cocks his head. “Let me guess. You’ve designs on this house and have been scaring people off while you wait to be pre-approved for a mortgage?” 

Kylo laughs. “I’ve been waiting a while, in that case, yeah?” 

Hux purses his lips. “Maybe you have poor credit.” 

Kylo’s smile spreads. “You’re mean,” he says. “I like it.” 

This, too, makes Hux’s cheeks heat. He sets the coffee aside next to his abandoned muffin and dusts his hands off on his pants, realizing at that moment that he’s still in his nightclothes. 

“I have much to do today,” he tells Kylo tersely. “Thank you for the breakfast.” 

Shrugging one shoulder, Kylo reaches for the paper sack and clears the muffin wrapper and used napkins from between them. “Have any plans tonight?” he asks. “For Halloween?”

Hux is startled, having completely lost track of anything but which day of the week to expect the movers. He doesn’t want to admit that, however. 

“I don’t celebrate Halloween,” he says. 

Both of Kylo’s eyebrows shoot up. “Well that won’t do at all,” he says, grinning. Before Hux can ask what he means, Kylo stands up, having correctly interpreted Hux’s dismissal. “There’s a full moon tonight. First one on Halloween in seventy-six years. Having a party. You should come.” 

Hux stands as well, clutching his coffee. “Like I said, I don’t…” 

“...celebrate Halloween. Then come celebrate the full moon. Or your new house. Whatever.” 

Before Hux can say anything, Kylo turns away and weaves through the boxes toward the door. He looks around the same way he had on the way in, furtively. Part of Hux wants to call out and tell him to wait, then tell him about the strange things he’d felt the night before in the house. But the part of Hux that doesn’t believe in such phenomenon is much more dominant. 

“Just try not to make too much noise,” he tells Kylo sharply instead. “I’m not a fan of loud music, and I go to bed early.” 

Kylo reaches the door, the does a graceful pirouette on one heel so he’s facing Hux again. “Yes, master,” he says with a coy smile. 

With that, he lets himself out the front door, leaving Hux staring after him. The tingling, strange feeling that Kylo had left in his wake persists for long moments, but then the silence starts to feel oppressive. The only sound is a clock ticking in the background, slow and steady like a heartbeat, making the house seem to breathe around him. 

Finally, Hux bestirs himself, gathering his muffin and the coffee lid and turning toward the kitchen. 

He stops abruptly, hitting a wall of stomach-curdling realization. 

He doesn’t  _ have _ a clock. Like most people, he has a cell phone, and it certainly doesn’t  _ tick. _

He might have chalked it up to his imagination, except he can still hear it. He scans the room, starting to wind through the boxes, pausing near each one and straining his ears, thinking that maybe it’s not a clock but some other electronic he’d forgotten that he packed. Or something one of the movers squirreled away to screw with him. 

It’s a ridiculous notion, though, and Hux chides himself for it. He leaves his half-eaten breakfast on the kitchen counter and continues his sweep of the house, looking for the sound, telling himself there’s a rational explanation even though the ticking manages to follow him into every room, never sounding closer and never farther away. 

He can still hear it when he finally circles back around to the cluttered den and the base of the staircase to the second floor. He stands there looking up, filled with a sense of foreboding, one hand clutching the banister. Then he swallows the tight, anxious knot in his throat and starts up the stairs. 

The polished wood is chilly under his bare feet, and he tries to recall whether the air had been warmer moments before or if his imagination is making it colder. He can’t help remembering in stark detail the night before, when the same feeling had stolen over him in the master bathroom. 

He finally reaches the top landing and turns left, edging down the hallway. The deeper into the house he goes, the stiffer the hair on the back of his neck becomes, because the mechanical, steady ticking sounds just the same as it had downstairs, as though it’s following him room to room. The ability to explain it away starts to evaporate. 

Each room that Hux peers into—three bedrooms to the left of the stairs, a bedroom and bath to the right—are bare. The house is admittedly far too large for him, full of space he has no furniture nor use for. 

But he’d gotten the place for far less than the typical market value for such a home in this neighborhood. 

His heart beat seems to synch with the clock, feeling increasingly loud and painful in his chest as he moves about the second floor. By the time he looks into the last, empty bedroom, his palms are sweating. But he takes a deep breath, steadying himself and resolving to call...someone...tomorrow to come check the house over for any sort of issue that might be causing the noise. Pipes, maybe. 

It’s a threadbare attempt to wrap this strangeness in logic, but Hux clings to it, starting back for the stairs. His palm is moist and clammy as he clings to the banister on his way down, unconsciously stepping to the metronome of the disembodied clock, until, halfway down, the ticking abruptly stops. 

Hux freezes, the sharp thud of his heart taking the place of it in his ears. He waits for it to start again, tension building, unable to deny the fact that he can  _ feel _ something watching him. He’d read that eerie feelings like this were simply animal perceptions of the environment that the civilized human mind had become too dampened to register. Warnings born of minutiae at the edge of awareness. 

He turns around slowly to look behind him, fingers white-knuckled on the banister. There’s nothing there, the stairs terminating on the same, empty second-floor landing. Hesitantly, he starts creeping slowly downstairs again. 

He’s three steps from the ground floor when he feels something solid slam into his back, just between his shoulder blades, shoving him forward violently and making him stumble. He slips, catches himself by one heel on the next stair step, falls hard on his ass and wrenches his shoulder painfully when he doesn’t let go of the railing. His heart is thundering now, a yelp of terror caught in his throat, and all he can do for a horrible, paralyzed moment is hold on to the banister like a lifeline. 

The air is freezing, and as he cowers there, he feels it move. Ballooning, retracting, then ruffling the hair on his head as it gusts past him and down the stairs. He watches the flaps of two open boxes flutter briefly, then the air abruptly warms again.

Hux, however, is shivering, and feels like he might never stop shivering again. It takes all the willpower he has to let go of the railing and slide down the rest of the staircase on his ass, holding hard to the balusters on the way. When his feet touch the floor, he darts across the living room and throws himself onto the couch, yanking his feet up and burrowing back into the cushions just to feel something solid behind him. 

He stares with wide, prey-animal eyes at the staircase, down the hall, at the boxes on the floor, through the archway into the kitchen, looking for...what? What had just tried to shove him down the stairs?

His attention shifts sharply to the front door, and he considers bolting outside, leaping into his car, and driving the fuck away from this house like all the people that had come before him. 

That feels, though, like moving backward, like giving up on the future and slinking back, defeated, to the past. Years of misery and loneliness were in the past. Nothing but bad memories. 

Even a haunted house was better than that. 

“You idiot,” Hux hisses at himself the moment the thought crosses his mind. Of course his house isn’t  _ haunted _ . He’s overtired, stressed, imagining things, and what he needs is his anti-anxiety medication. And maybe, if this kept up, an appointment with his psychiatrist to evaluate the onset of hallucinations. 

Hux has no idea what time it is when he finally manages to peel himself off the couch and head resolutely down the hall to his bedroom. He refuses to look at the staircase as he passes it, goes straight for his toiletries case, and fishes out the tan and white prescription bottle that had kept him going through the last year of his father’s increasingly distressful illness and the increasingly abusive bullshit that had come with it. 

He dumps two out into his palm and swallows them dry, then he rounds on the boxes hemming him in, and sets to unpacking. This is  _ his _ house.

  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

It’s early evening by the time Hux lays the last of the boxes from his kitchen onto the neat stack on the floor, tape sliced carefully and the cardboard flattened back into its native shape. He considers, briefly, carrying the whole lot out to the garbage in an act of defiance against the house, but then tells himself that these U-Haul boxes are expensive, in good condition, and you just never know when you might have to move again. For whatever reason. 

Instead, he moves the stack from the floor, laying it alongside the wall by the basement door. It’s a door he hasn’t opened yet, and he looks at the padlock on it with trepidation. What’s down there that someone wanted to  _ keep _ there? 

He knows he has the key, but isn’t sure which it is. Considering his recent experience with stairs, he’s not quite prepared to go delving into that darkness just yet. Whatever mysteries are down there will just have to remain mysterious for now. 

The idea of taking a nice, hot bath flits through his mind, but he rejects that just as quickly—in less than forty-eight hours he’s accumulated several things he’s afraid of doing in his own house, which is starting to look a lot like the situation he just escaped from. Thinking it, Hux almost changes his mind about the basement, glances at the door again and the relatively new padlock, and imagines the previous owners having placed it there just before they fled the house. 

Tea. He’ll have tea instead. 

His newly organized kitchen is a balm to his soul. His tea kettle is already on the stove, where he generally keeps it. Taking it over to the sink, he twists the spigot to turn on the water to fill it. 

Nothing happens. 

He twists it back, locking it, then turns it again, setting off an awful clanging under the sink that travels up the pipes until it vomits out mucky brown water in vicious spurts. He lets it run for a full minute, waiting for the stream to level out and clear up, but it doesn’t. 

“Damnit,” he snaps, twisting the spigot off again. He slaps the tea kettle down on the counter and takes a couple of bottled waters out the refrigerator, refusing to be denied his cup of tea by yet another maintenance issue. He pours them into the kettle and sets the kettle on the stove, then opens the cabinet for a mug. 

The familiar ritual settles his nerves. His evening cup of tea after finally getting his father to bed had been the first thing he did every day  _ just _ for himself. The kitchen had been a little haven as well, as during the latter part of his illness, Brendol hadn’t possessed the ability to prepare any of his own food. Despite the fact that the task had fallen to Hux, he’d enjoyed cooking. He’d tried new recipes a few times to share with his father, but Brendol had never had a good word for any of them, so in the end, Hux cooked for himself. If that made Brendol’s microwaved, sodium-ladened meals take longer to get to his room, oh well. 

As the tea steeps, Hux adjusts the bar chair he’d pushed against the counter in order to reach the highest shelf when putting away his dishes. He turns it to face the window, then perches on it. Outside, it’s almost the same murky half-light that it had been when he’d seen the shadow thing behind him. Thinking it, he glances over his shoulder, then puts a foot on the floor to scoot the chair until his back is solidly facing the cabinets before looking out the window again. 

There’s a moment of tense expectation while he waits to see something, but there’s only the trees and the blue-purple glow from the window of Kylo’s house. 

_ Kylo _ . He’s an enigma, whose thinly veiled hints of more knowledge about this house than he’s revealing have put far too many questions in Hux’s mind. 

Hux picks up his mug, cooled enough that it’s a pleasant heat in his palms. It’s chilly in the kitchen, but it’s easy to attribute that to the rotted weather stripping that he’d have to replace as soon as possible. 

He sighs, his feelings on the massive project encompassed by this house somewhere between dread and elation at having something to do, something to grow with his own vision. 

The thought reminds him of the project he’s looking forward to the most—replacing the old floor tiles in the master bath. He takes a sip of his tea and sets the mug aside, taking his phone out of his pocket and opening Chrome. This is something he’d done often before his father died, sitting with his cup of tea at the kitchen island and fantasy house shopping. Occasionally, he’d allow himself to look at the million plus dollar listings, like a stable boy picturing himself in a grand castle, but for the most part, he’d been practical about it. 

Until, perhaps, he’d bought this house.

He types in  _ bathroom floor tiles _ in the browser and then clicks  _ images _ , just wanting to think about patterns at the moment rather than things like cost. As he’s scrolling, he hears music drifting across the yard from Kylo’s house, and finds himself surprised that he isn’t annoyed by it. It’s something grounding this bizarre day to Earth, to something decidedly human. 

Hux stops, thumb hovering over the phone screen. Had he truly decided that there was something in this house? Is he clinging to the easiest way to explain that perhaps his mind  _ isn’t _ unraveling? 

Are either of those possibilities something he wants to acknowledge? He’s a thinker by nature, often lying awake late into the night contemplating various, unanswerable questions, but after the last two days, heading in either of these directions feels like a genuinely bad idea. 

Impulsively, he glances out at Kylo’s house again. It’s gotten darker, but Hux can see people framed in the window that faces him. They’ve taken on a purplish hue that makes them look mildly alien, and one of them has on a pointed witch’s hat. Hux wonders if that’s Kylo. 

He thinks briefly about accepting Kylo’s invitation to come to his party, but then considers the number of complete strangers and the sheer amount of  _ strange _ in general that he’ll no doubt encounter. Hux is anti-social on the best of days, and just the idea of having to make small talk with someone he doesn’t know makes his skin crawl. 

No, he won’t go. But, maybe he could get out of the house for a little while after he finishes his tea. To do what, he’s not sure. Browse floor tiles at a bar? At least in that kind of atmosphere, people tend to read body language—hunched over a phone screen and not making eye contact usually deters even the drunk ones. And sometimes the bartenders.

Hux looks back to his phone then, moving his thumb and rolling the screen up as he reaches blindly for his tea. He clicks open a page with authentic Italian tile and brings the mug to his lips, taking a sip. 

It’s ice cold. Not lukewarm, not room temperature cool, but  _ cold _ , like it had refrigerated for hours. He pulls it away from his lips abruptly, looking at it, then looks with alarm at the time on his phone. It’s been only ten minutes since he poured the water from the kettle. Not that twice that time or more would have resulted in the way the tea had been entirely leeched of heat. 

He sets it heavily back on the counter, sloshing some of the water out in his haste to be rid of it. 

Then, before his mind can even begin to tackle possible explanations for this, the mug begins to quiver, like the counter beneath is vibrating. Hux can see little ripples fanning out in the frigid tea, and he cautiously puts his hand flat on the countertop. There’s no movement, no tremor passing through the wood. 

No sooner than he’d lifted his hand from the counter again, the tea stops vibrating for a heavy space of seconds, then flies across the room. It doesn’t  _ slide,  _ doesn’t  _ tip over _ , it  _ rockets _ off the edge and shatters on the floor like someone—or some _ thing _ —has yanked it off and thrown it. 

Hux just stares, trembling as he watches the pool of liquid spread across the floor, trickling along the grout. He realizes at last that he’s clutching the edge of the counter so hard that its biting into his skin, and he forces himself to let go, sliding off the chair because it suddenly seems precarious. 

His heart beating painfully hard, he looks out the window again, hearing in his head the way Kylo had offered to help. Whatever that meant. Across the way, he can still see the witch hat, a black shadow on a blue background, and he decides that maybe the universe is telling him something. 

Not that Hux believes in that kind of crap. 

He gives the broken tea mug another look, then pads quickly past it and out of the kitchen. As he goes, he flicks on every light-switch he passes, bathing the house in warm light. It does little to banish the chill that’s settled in his core, but it’s certainly better than shadows. 

He half expected something to turn them off behind him, or lightbulbs to start shattering and flies to swarm the windows, but nothing happens. He makes it to the door without incident, yanks his shoes on, and steps out onto the porch. 

He stops, startled by the big, orange pumpkin at the top of his steps.

Hux edges cautiously toward it, down the stairs, and finds that it’s not just a pumpkin, it’s a jack-o-lantern. The face of it is carved in the profile image of what is clearly, judging from the tail and the big, pointed ears, a fox, illuminated by a bright orange glow like some kind of fey spirit.

Hux glances at his strange neighbor’s house, running a hand back through his hair and wondering whether Kylo had put this here. Who else would have? Hux isn’t dense enough to miss the potential insinuation behind the choice in the carving, and it makes him feel a twinge of vertigo. It’s been decades, it seems, since someone has flirted with him. 

He has no idea how to react to it, and worse, what if he’s wrong? What if this was just...a coincidence? Or maybe it’s Kylo’s spirit animal or some other nonsense. If Hux goes to that party and takes the gesture at face value, Kylo could very well laugh in his face. And if Hux  _ doesn’t _ say anything, he risks offending him in a way that’s familiar to Hux. Rejection and disregard are bitter pills to swallow. 

Hux glances one last time toward Kylo’s house, then up to the front door of his own home. He’s left it standing open, and it forces him to consider what may lie in wait for him, prompting him to pick between two potential horrors.

With a sigh, and one final glance at the jack-o-lantern and the glowing fox carving that stirs something long dormant in Hux’s chest, he makes his choice. His feet feel especially heavy as he walks back up the stairs and across the porch. 

But his toe has barely brushed the threshold before the door swings forward and slams in his face with a force that rattles his teeth. Hux stands there, heart rabbiting, adrenaline pulsing through him and telling him to  _ run _ , but then he sets his jaw, reaches out, and grabs the doorknob. He twists it. 

It’s locked. 

“Fuck,” Hux mutters, patting his pockets and realizing that he hadn’t picked up his keys. 

He tries the knob one more time, turning it both ways and leaning into it, but it’s well and truly locked. He moves to the front window, the one that overlooks his sparsely decorated living room. He makes a half-hearted effort to push it up and open, but it’s painted shut, and even if it hadn’t been, it’s locked from the inside. Hux himself had done that last night, just like he’d locked every window in the house. Even the ones upstairs. 

Hux turns his head and looks at Kylo’s house, hesitating. He’s not sure what time it is, but the moon—huge, full, and yellow-orange—is rising, and there’s no way he’s calling a locksmith…

...he pats his pockets again…

...without a damn phone. 

Sighing, Hux decides there’s nothing for it but to walk over to Kylo’s house and, at the very least, borrow his phone.

Reluctant, but also mildly relieved that he doesn’t have to face his increasingly sinister house for the moment, Hux takes the steps down to the sidewalk and edges toward the party. He knows he stands out as he makes his way up to Kylo’s porch and becomes the one guy not in a costume. 

He feels stiff, awkward, and tries his best not to brush against anyone as he maneuvers his way carefully past a fairy, a werewolf, a cat in fishnet stockings, and someone dressed as a giant banana—a choice Hux sincerely wonders about. He feels more than one set of eyes on him as he crosses the threshold of the open door, but he purposefully makes no eye contact with anyone. 

Inside is an atmosphere of black-light, red-toned bulbs in the shadeless lamps, and strings of blue fairy lights outlining the doors and walkthroughs. Hux genuinely wonders whether Kylo actually did any decorating for this party or if this was just how things looked all the time. 

Perhaps he didn’t always have a roiling fog creeping across the floor. Hux’s footsteps make funnels through it, wisps of it scattering and then being reabsorbed. He looks for any evidence of the dry-ice machine that must be here somewhere, but Kylo has it obscured. 

Hux can’t really place the music, which is just loud enough to turn the various conversations around him into an indistinguishable drone. Whatever it is, he’s not a fan of it, but thinks it sounds exactly like the sort of creepy goth stuff someone like Kylo would be into. 

“Boo!” 

The voice is right in his ear. Already tautly wound, Hux jumps, startled into a collision with a nearby end-table, setting the lamp on it swaying and bruising his thigh. A hand closes on his arm, steadying him, and once his feet are securely underneath him again, Hux whirls around. 

The harsh words that had formed on his tongue die there.

Kylo is grinning at him like a Cheshire cat. The lights slide in a cascade of colors over the glossy, patent leather pants he’s wearing, low slung on his hips, a nearly transparent black shirt. His bare, toned arms are crawling with tattoos, a riot of colors made ambiguous in the strange glow. His nipples are pierced.

It makes Hux’s face hot. 

It takes him far too long to look  _ up _ . To Kylo’s face. When he does, he’s grateful as fuck for the semi-dark room. 

He swallows past the dryness in his throat and plasters on a perturbed expression. “I’m not a fan of the jump-scare type of horror movie,” he snips.

Kylo just grins wider. “Goddess, you’re mean. I love it.” He slips his hand beneath Hux’s bicep— _ fully _ circling it, holy fuck—and tows Hux along toward another part of the house. The sea of people parts for them easily and the proximity to Kylo seems to call a great deal of attention to Hux, who shakes him off. 

“I’m capable of walking on my own, thank you very much,” he says.

“You don’t have to thank me for that,” Kylo says, smiling at him over his shoulder, then dipping through a doorway and into what proves to be a kitchen. 

Hux is flustered by how tight Kylo’s pants are, by the tattoo that covers most of his back, coiling down his spine. In the few seconds he allows himself to look before Kylo catches him at it, Hux picks out crows, a black cat, a moon and stars. He has to wrench his eyes away as Kylo sidles up to the kitchen counter, grabs a plastic cup, and fills it with something red. 

He turns and offers it to Hux, who takes it and peers into it, wrinkling his nose dubiously. 

“What is this, the blood of virgins?” 

Kylo laughs, a delighted bark, then pours himself a cup. “Nah. Don’t know any. You have to undergo a ritual to be invited into my home.” He leans forward, lips to Hux’s ear. “An orgy is step one.” 

Hux’s cheeks flame. Kylo’s voice is low and warm against the shell of his ear and it makes his blood sing. When Kylo draws back, his eyes are glittering and searching Hux’s own. 

“I’m glad you decided to come,” he says. “Didn’t think you would.” 

Hux’s mouth hangs open for a moment before he remembers why he’s really here. “I uh…” he begins, but then realizes that he can’t remember the last time—if there’d ever been one—that someone had been glad to see him. 

“I figured, why not?” he says instead, flipping gears, albeit a little lamely. “Not sure about the orgy thing though.” 

Kylo’s lips fold into a disappointed moue. “Well, can just be you and me then.”

Hux blushes and drinks half the punch in his cup in one gulp. “You’re forward, aren't you?” 

Kylo shrugs and turns to pour himself a cup of punch from the repurposed, five-gallon water bottle. “Life is short,” he says. 

Eyeing him over the rim of his Solo cup, Hux raises an eyebrow. “I’ve always found it to be interminably long.” 

He’s surprised when Kylo doesn’t have an immediate, clever riposte. Instead, he leans one hip against the counter and cocks his head, the look on his face almost sad. He opens his mouth to say something, then clearly thinks better of it. Finally he smiles, taking another drink of his punch before setting the cup on the counter. Then he plucks Hux’s out of his hand and refills it.

“It’s a good thing you’re here, then,” he says brightly, handing Hux his cup back. “We have work to do.” 

Hux has barely gotten a grip on his cup before Kylo is moving, snagging Hux’s free hand and pulling him along in his wake, back toward the makeshift rave in his living room. Kylo tugs Hux out into the center of the room, spinning him around so he’s facing away. Before Hux can quite comprehend what’s happening, Kylo’s hands are on his hips, chest pressed to his back, and lips against his ear again. 

“Dance with me,” he says.

Hux’s mind screeches to a halt and his body goes stiff with it. He doesn’t  _ dance _ . He’s never danced in his life. He throws a panicked glance at the people around him, most of them standing and talking, and a scant few moving to the music. There’s a carefree look on every face, and Hux wonders if they’re all on drugs. 

Alarmed by this untoward situation, Hux fully intends to bolt, but the impulse doesn’t make it from his brain to his legs—very soundly blocked by Kylo’s hands. It takes a moment for him to realize that he actually  _ is _ moving, body swaying to the music, guided by Kylo’s touch like a marionette. 

Kylo’s voice is in his ear again, low, pitched just enough for Hux to hear him ask, “Is this too much?” 

Hux wonders for a split second which of the many things happening right now that are  _ too much _ that Kylo might be referring to, but then he feels one of Kylo’s big hands drift from his hip to splay across his belly. Hux’s throat closes up as he’s flooded with the old compulsion to hide, like his father is in the room and seeing just how queer his son is, but then he reminds himself that his father is  _ dead _ , and he, Hux, is alive. 

He answers Kylo with a shake of his head, forcing his muscles to relax. Kylo must feel it, because he makes a pleased humming sound in Hux’s ear and draws Hux closer. Kylo’s every contour molds against him, bodies moving in synch to the music, Hux soaking up Kylo’s rhythm like it’s his own. 

Hux lets his eyes flutter closed, leans his head back, tilts it when he feels Kylo’s lips brush his neck. He feels like he’s fallen down the rabbit hole and come out in an uncharted world—one where he’s not afraid, not tense, and not slowly dying on the inside. 

Kylo’s nose bumps Hux’s earlobe. “Did you like the jack-o-lantern?” 

“I thought that was you,” Hux murmurs, turning his head a little so Kylo can hear him. “Do you carve those for the whole neighborhood?” 

“Just the foxes,” Kylo purrs. 

Hux blushes again. No one’s ever said anything like that to him. He can’t even recall the last time he’d heard a compliment at all, much less one like  _ that _ . He’s certainly never thought of himself as all that attractive. 

“You are, you know,” Kylo says. “I’m surprised you don’t know it.”

Hux’s eyes open. “Do you read minds?”

Kylo reaches around Hux, taking the forgotten cup of punch out of his hand. The warmth of his body disappears for a moment, then Kylo’s turning him around again. Hux sees the Solo cup has been teleported to the end table he’d almost knocked over earlier. 

“I don’t have to,” he says, cupping Hux’s waist in his hands and pulling him close. “Your whole body froze when I said it. Like you’d never heard that before.” 

Hux swallows, riveted by Kylo’s intense, earnest eyes. He’s overcome with a feeling that they’ve met before, in some other time or place. It’s not the kind of thought Hux ever has, but nor is the suspicion that his house might be haunted. 

That thought brings Hux in a bone-jarring crash back to Earth. He pulls away from Kylo, heart fluttering in a wave of sudden adrenaline. He remembers why he came here in the first place. 

“What?” Kylo asks, concern on his handsome face. “You just went white as a sheet.” 

Hux instantly regrets the loss of Kylo’s warmth, but doesn’t allow himself to get lost in it again. 

“I actually...came by to borrow your phone,” he says. “I locked myself out of my house.” 

For a few seconds, Kylo looks hurt. Then he glances over Hux’s shoulder, toward the living room window which faces Hux’s home. When their eyes meet again, there’s understanding there, and Hux realizes with a certain amount of relief that Kylo isn’t surprised at all. 

“Yeah,” Kylo says. “Come on.” 

He links his fingers through Hux’s again, guiding him once more through the house. Hux doesn’t shake him off this time, glad for the solid touch. They head down a dark hallway and Kylo opens a door at the end of it, ushering Hux inside. 

It’s obviously Kylo’s bedroom, and Hux wavers for a moment, wondering if this has gone in an entirely unexpected direction, but then Kylo slips past him, crosses to the nightstand beside his bed, and picks up a cell phone. 

Hux relaxes, coming inside. Without really thinking about it, he pushes the door closed, drowning out the music and cacophony of voices. 

Kylo flops down on his bed, sitting with his legs crossed underneath him, back to the headboard. He holds the cell phone out and Hux takes it, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. Opening up Chrome, he stares at the search bar with his thumb hovering over the keyboard. 

“You really want to get back in there tonight?” Kylo asks, reading his mind. Again. 

Hux takes a deep breath, summoning the dogged determination that had kept him going through all the years of his father’s illness. 

“It’s  _ my _ house,” he says, brow furrowing. 

“I mean...it’s not,” Kylo says. “Which is why he locked you out.” 

Hux looks at him, startled. “ _ He? _ ” 

Kylo raises his eyebrows and tilts his head toward the window. “Look.” 

Hux, confused, stands up again and approaches the window cautiously. He leans close, nose nearly touching the glass as he peers toward his house. The moon is up now, the glow of it turning the landscape silver, and for a long moment, Hux sees nothing. Then he realizes that Kylo’s bedroom window must be the one that directly faces his kitchen, and the thought draws Hux’s gaze through the bare branches of the tree separating the two houses and to the kitchen window. 

There’s no mistaking the form there. It’s the black shadow of a human, just a silhouette, but it’s  _ there _ . 

Hux reels away from the window. 

“Want to stay here tonight?” Kylo asks. 

Hux looks at him, looks back through the window toward his house with his heart hammering. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “If...that’s okay? I’ll call a locksmith in the morning.” 

“Don’t have to,” Kylo says. “He’ll open the door for me.” 

“He’ll open the door for you?” Hux asks, his voice a little shrill. “Why is that, exactly?” 

Kylo shrugs one shoulder. Hux can’t read the expression on his face, though if he had to guess, he’d say it was bitterness. 

“Because he’s my uncle.” 

“Your  _ uncle _ is physically in my house?” 

“He was,” Kylo says. “He died five years ago.”

Hux’s head is spinning. “This isn’t funny,” he snaps. “Halloween or not.” He tosses Kylo’s phone on the bed beside him. 

There’s no humor on Kylo’s face, however. None at all. “I have a spare toothbrush you can borrow,” he says. 

“A spare…this is nuts. I’m calling the police.” He turns and starts toward the door, then realizes that he’s thrown Kylo’s phone on the bed. He spins around to ask for it again so that he can dial 911, but as he does, his eyes catch his kitchen window again. Hux remembers clearly turning every light on that he'd passed on his way to his front door, but now they were off. Every one of them.

The figure in the window is more distinct now. Hux can make out the salt and pepper hair, the lined and bearded face creased with some dark emotion. He can almost feel the way the air in his bathroom had gone frigid like the tea he’d made, and he can hear in his head the ticking clock and the sound of shattering china on the kitchen tile. Hux suddenly has no desire to face whatever or whoever is in his house. He doesn’t even want to look at it. 

Stepping back, he glances at Kylo, who raises his eyebrows again. “So, you want to stay here tonight?” 

Hux swallows, wrapping his arms around himself, and nods.  
  
  
There is, after all, a spare toothbrush.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> your hardworking author respectfully requests not to receive criticisms, constructive intentions or otherwise.


End file.
